Final Project Justification Paper
By Wendy Eades

To create a visual introduction of myself, I used the Adobe Flash CS4 program. As I taught myself to use the software, I thought about my project. I decided that I wanted to use my own photographs to show, rather than tell my online classmates about my life. I sparingly inserted text where it was necessary to communicate details that cannot be communicated easily with photographs. As I laid out the design for each image and the presentation I followed the CARP design tools introduced in class.
The image that best exemplifies contrast is the first image. I choose this photograph because it has a very light background while the foreground contains our dark faces which are only illuminated by the dim blue glow of the computer screen. I placed the letters of the descriptive text against the light background of the photo to bring the viewer’s attention to the text. The color of our faces is repeated in the color of the text.
The second image is of the mountains with a photographer centered in the image. Initially it seems that the alignment of the composition is in the center of the image, but through further examination the alignment is more complex. After consciously observing the image, the viewer will notice that the center of the physical image uninteresting it is simply the area where the mountains and sky meet. I designed the image so that the viewer’s eye enters the composition where the bright blue sky fills the top of the image. The blue shape of the sky is aligned with the reflected light in the water to bring the viewer’s eye into the lower part of the photographic composition. In the lower part of the composition exists the photographer, but the photographer isn’t the focus of the composition. The details of the shore line, the curvature of the dry rocks, and the contrast of the mountains those are the main subject matter in this composition. The curvature of the shore is aligned with the blue lettering in the lower right of the composition, which draws a visual line between shore and text. The font is aligned with the face of the photographer which draws a conceptual line between the photographer and the lettering. The alignment of the text and photographer visually communicates the significance of the text to the meaning of the image.
The font style is repeated through out the presentation to help tie the images together. The font colors were carefully chosen to stand out against their background but match the subject matter of the photograph, which is also a repeated concept. Photographs were repeatedly used through out the presentation to visual tie the presentation together.
Proximity is utilized in several ways during the presentation. The descriptive text has been placed in close proximity to the subject matter of the photograph. This visually ties the text with the subject matter. To keep each slide from becoming too crowded the text was spaced out over several slides. The spacing of the text had to be considered so that the meaning of the entire text didn’t get lost. If the proximity of the words that complete a thought was too far apart then the meaning of the words would be lost.
I used contrast, alignment, repetition, and proximity to tie individual images with their descriptive text and to help tie a flash presentation into one work and to successfully introduce my self through a flash presentation.